strawberries in winter
by songs
Summary: and she is six when her heart stops being her own; — ო sasusaku.


**title: **strawberries in winter

**pairing: **sasuke ო sakura**  
**

**disclaimer: **i don't own naruto!

**notes: **slightly divergent from canon!verse but mostly canon-compliant.**  
**

* * *

Sakura is six when she first meets him.

It's an edgeless memory, so misty that it might have been a dream. She remembers: the rose-water tea in her tinny grasp, the summer-smell of berries and watermelon, the loud voices of passerby, and the sudden absence of her mother.

She is shivering and small, all hair and eyes and china-bones as her seafoam gaze darts through the crowd, only managing to catch glimpses of the street-vendors and merchants and customers.

Sakura feels tears prick the backs of her bottle-green eyes; she drops her steaming tea and begins to sprint through the weave of people, crying out with big, wet, throat-breaking sobs, voice shaking, _Where's Mommy where's Mommy I'm scared where's Mommy—_

She crashes into something small and hard and angled, and feels the breath seep from her lungs; she realizes that her eyes have been screwed shut when they flutter open, and for a single moment there is only deep, deep ocean-blue-black. Then her vision clears and focuses, her current predicament catching up with her:

Sakura is toppled over a _boy._

"I'msosorry!" she screeches, jumping backwards, hysteria momentarily forgotten.

The boy, pale and star-white, blinks up at her; there is something akin to annoyance in his expression, and then it flickers away, and she notices his gaze slip to her hair.

There is an entire world shifting around them, but all Sakura hears is silence before he mouths: "_Pretty_."

She doesn't even have the time to blush; everything begins to turn back into motion, slowly, slowly, slowly—wading through sleep-water—until the year-long minutes melt into seconds and her mother is dragging her away by the dip of her wrist, scolding, _Sakura-chan, don't ever do this again _and the boy is off with his brother, sneaking glances over his shoulder and Sakura doesn't even know his name, doesn't know that this is the moment when her heart stops being her own.

* * *

When Sasuke is seven, he sees her again. The fairy-girl.

At first, he thinks she might have been a dream. Magic. It all happened the day before the Tanabata Festival, after all; maybe he had eaten too many moon-cakes (even though he doesn't really like sweets), maybe Itachi had held him on his shoulders for too long.

But, still. He remembers her hair, all pale and pink, like cherry-blossoms, like the nova-heart of garden-tomatoes. Pretty. Like a story-book fairy.

Today he is at the playground; Itachi is training, his mother is visiting a friend, his father is busy.

So Sasuke is on the swings, trying to pump higher than the idiot Naruto, who has declared that they are rivals, when he catches sight of a flash of rose-pink from the corner of his eye.

Her fingers are skimming lovingly over a bed of flowers and there is a sun-bright girl grinning beside her and Naruto—the _moron—_traces his gaze and beams.

"That's Sakura-chan." He manages to puff out his chest and sigh out her name while still swinging. "I'm gonna marry her."

Sasuke scowls. "No, you're not."

"Oh, yeah?" Naruto goads. "How do _you _know that?"

The Uchiha-boy quiets, before announcing: "Because I am."

And then Naruto leaps off the swing and starts yelling and Sasuke is too busy trying to block out his shrills to notice Sakura's gaze sliding over to him.

* * *

Sakura is eight and she knows two things: she wants to be a ninja, and she is in love with Uchiha Sasuke.

But he is different, now. She remembers watching him, sometimes, before The Incident (the night his brother kills his family and he screams and screams and screams through the streets of Konoha with blood soaking him to the bones) when he was still mostly-smiling and sweet—and she hasn't forgotten the day before the festival, years ago, and she now knows that it was him and wants a happily-ever-after, but nothing about Sasuke is happy anymore.

(She still loves him)

When they are partnered up for kunai practice (Sakura's soul leaps into her throat and the other girls are green with envy), she compliments, "You're really good!"

"Hn." His gaze is cold as he throws the kunai back to her; she catches it, accidentally, by the blade, and cuts her hand. She whimpers and doesn't notice the way he seems to soften, suddenly, as his eyes hone in on her mosaic, red-and-white hands.

Iruka-sensei comes over and asks her if she is okay, and Sakura nods. She is about to toss the kunai back to Sasuke when he says:

"Throw it into the tree." At her blank stare, he clarifies. "You need to work on precision. Catching a kunai isn't going to help."

Sakura beams, the pain in her hand forgotten.

(She still loves him.)

* * *

When Sasuke is ten, he decides that Sakura is annoying.

She is weak. She follows him around. She flutters her eyelashes when she talks to him.

He doesn't like her. Seriously. _He doesn't. _

(And he's _definitely _not going to marry her.)

But on Mother's Day, when Naruto is absent (as usual) and everyone else is working on making cards for their mothers before ninjutsu-class starts, Sasuke feels a curl of something like anger and sadness and rage all mixed into one, and the urge to slam his fist into the wall is almost suffocating, but then Sakura sits beside him, no _Happy Mother's Day _paper in hand (even though he knows, for a _fact_, that she still has both her parents) and just begins to talk to him, all nonsense words, and he can tell she kind-of-sort-of wants to play with the glitter and flower-petals that the other girls are crafting their cards with, but she continues to ramble: about the last test, about improving her aim with kunai, about how talented he is, about how much she loves him—

And, strangely enough, he listens to every word.

He doesn't say anything back, but there's a glint in her eye that says she doesn't expect him to.

That she doesn't mind.

And Sasuke decides that maybe she isn't _so _annoying, after all.

* * *

Twelve-year-old-Sakura sighs as she pulls more medical tape out of her pack, before—messily—wrapping it around the crimson bloom of her ankle.

She bites back a hiss, feeling a bit pathetic.

Only _she _could manage to get this injured on a stupid, C-rank mission.

All they had to do was retrieve a scroll from the library of some border village.

Of _course _she would fall and skin her leg while they were on their way.

Team Seven is currently making camp for the night (because of her injury, no doubt); Naruto is scouting for food, Kakashi is off somewhere, likely reading his book, and Sasuke is just... standing, a ways off, brooding and beautiful.

(And Sakura is currently being the weakest link. Nothing new, she thinks bitterly)

She must have spoken aloud, because Sasuke's attention snaps to her, his dark, dark, _dark _blue eyes (she's known this much for years. His eyes are blue, not black. Blue, like the depths of the sea) narrowing at the sight of her.

Sakura then blinks down at the _horrible _bandaging of her ankle, and feels a hot blush etch her skin.

"Sorry," she says, peeling away the wrappings, trying not to wince at the scarlet staining them. "I'll be done with this in a second. Then I can help set up camp..."

She probably wouldn't have struggled so much if he hadn't been there _watching her_. But, as fate would have it, ten minutes later, she still has yet to bandage her wound (what is _wrong _with her?) and she's about to just stand up and leave it as is when she hears Sasuke scoff:

"You're pathetic."

Sakura is caught between crying and snapping, but since this is Sasuke, she does neither, and just settles for looking away, shame in her lashes and red in her skin.

And then, so softly that she might have imagined it, he steps towards her, footfalls barely glancing over the dew of the grass, and her heart is hammering and her head is pounding and she can barely breathe as he gracefully sits beside her, gently pulling the medical tape from her hands.

Neither of them say anything as he wraps her ankle.

But Sakura knows that she doesn't imagine the blush in his cheeks.

* * *

Sasuke is thirteen when he sees her again, for the first time since he has left Konoha.

She is without her teammates in the wide clearing, standing across from an enemy shinobi. She has a sharp glare on her face that doesn't quite seem to belong there, a hand dipped into her kunai-pouch, and Sasuke finds this all surprising enough, considering how _weak_ he remembers her being.

(A glimmery, pastel, nothing-girl who had no business being a kunoichi.)

Sasuke doesn't know what compels him to stay hidden in his high shroud of trees, what makes him watch how the match progresses

(He _does _know, though. Sakura is weak. Sakura is fragile. Sakura is glass. It would be _wrong_ (as skewered as his morals have become) to leave her to her demise)

He waits, and tries to figure out how he can step in and take down the other ninja without Sakura noticing him when _the earth begins to shake._

His eyes snap back to the scene, and he sees Sakura's fists in the ground and the cracks of the earth below and the man flying backwards and Sakura chasing after him, a scream in her lungs, her long-again hair trailing behind her like a beacon—

The tree he is in begins to topple over and Sasuke darts to the next tree, and by the time he manages to look over his shoulder, Sakura is gone.

(She doesn't need his help. She isn't weak. She could handle herself. She doesn't need _him_.)

Sasuke doesn't know why the thought bothers him so much.

(Even though he _does.)_

* * *

When she is fifteen, she dreams of him: his eyes on her, his lips on her, his hands—

And then she wakes up to a home without its heart and the only Sasuke she knows is the one who isn't the same boy at _all—this _Sasuke does not hesitate in trying to kill them when they finally reunite.

It is not the boy who wrapped her ankle, who protected her during the mission to Wave, who let her hug him during the Chuunin exams, who had the word "annoying" on his lips and something else in his eyes.

She trims her hair with a kunai, and she feels ashamed because she still, _still _loves him, no matter what he has become.

* * *

The day before he is seventeen, Sasuke finds himself being—_literally—_dragged back to Konoha.

It's painful; he's sure that his arm has been pulled out of its socket (not to mention the rest of the eclectic array of injuries his past-current-always teammates had showered him with), and the way Naruto is pulling on it and the way Sakura is not paying his suffering any mind seems to only reinforce the fact that his comfort seems to be the least of their worries.

"Welcome back, teme!" Naruto yells out, mock-caringly, unable to suppress a cackle as Sasuke's head scrapes against a rock.

He's shocked that after _that _fight (fists and jutsu and words and pink-fairy-girl-tears), Sakura and Naruto have enough energy and strength to torture him like this.

Sakura tuts, "Don't give him brain damage, Naruto." And Sasuke almost feels (in his numb state) relieved, before she tacks on. "He has enough issues."

He scowls, and it _hurts, _and then her cool hands are trailing down his face and Naruto is gagging and she whispers, "Are you okay?"

Sasuke manages a trademark, "Hn," and her smile is still in place as she tells Naruto to let go of him and then pulls him over her shoulder and—together—they continue to move forward.

* * *

Sakura is nineteen, and hasn't cut her hair in two years.

(Coincidentally, a certain Uchiha has been back in Konoha for this long. Go figure.)

She pulls it back, a lot of the time. But she likes it. It's not so heavy, anymore.

It feels like memories, but only the lovely ones.

Nothing has really happened between her and Sasuke. There is no fiery, passionate romance, no kisses, no touches, no training-sessions-turned-rendezvous—

But that day, they go out for lunch at Ichiraku—Naruto is _supposed to come_, but apparently has been sent off on some last minute mission—so the two of them sit in silence: Sakura flustered and Sasuke calm.

She's ready to just call it a day when she notices his stare, the blue-black of his eyes trained on her.

Sakura tilts her head. "Sasuke-kun?"

He says nothing, and she half expects him to glare, but then he says: "Your hair."

"Oh!" she exclaims, fingering a long, rosemary strand. "I, um, let it grow out. Again. Well, before, I, er, had it long because I heard you liked girls with long hair—but, no, um, it's not like that this time!" She's babbling and she knows it; Sasuke just gives her a blank look. "I just wanted... a change. Yeah, that's all! A change. Ha, boy, was I stupid, it's not like you even like long hair on girls. Right, Sasuke-kun?"

He is silent (as usual) and Sakura awkwardly switches her attention back to her (now cold) ramen, hoping that if she wishes hard enough, she can erase this entire conversation (one-sided as it was) from existence, then maybe Sasuke won't think of her as some stupid, shallow, _moron—_

"Only when it's pink."

Sakura blinks, once, twice; she must have just imagined that.

Her eyes trail up to Sasuke, who is currently wearing a very, very, gorgeous smirk.

She manages an, "Oh," and Sasuke just looks at her smugly as he reaches across the table for her hand.

* * *

_she loves him,_

_he's always loved her,  
_

_they don't get happily-ever-after,  
_

_but something close.  
_

* * *

_.  
_

_.  
_

_.  
_

fin.

* * *

**author's notes: **please leave a review! it's much-loved!

also, sasuke may be OOC because he's so hard to write ;.;


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